GOATS IN THE CROSSHAIRS Managers at Olympic National Park propose shooting mountain goats to save the stuff they graze, wallow and walk on – native plants. A recent draft environmental impact statement recommends killing the park’s 300 non-native goats rather than transferring them outside the park, reports the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Park managers say efforts to […]
Wildlife
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
Bring in more wolves
BRING IN MORE WOLVES The private group Defenders of Wildlife recently extended its Wolf Recovery Fund, established in Wyoming in 1987, to cover the Southwest. The program reimburses ranchers for livestock killed by wolves by raising funds from “the millions of wolf supporters all over the nation,” says Hank Fischer of Defenders. A Phoenix-based citizens’ […]
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
Baiting continues unabated
Baiting continues unabated When the Forest Service announced last year that it would write a new policy regulating bear baiting, environmentalists and animal rights advocates were hopeful. They thought the agency might take a hard look at the controversial practice of laying out rotting foods to attract bears within shooting distance. But the new policy, […]
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
Conspiracy of optimism
Conspiracy of Optimism Until World War II, private forests provided 95 percent of the nation’s wood products; from 1945 to 1960, the timber industry turned away from its overcut land to publicly owned trees on the national forests. Confident in their talents and technology, Forest Service managers embraced clearcutting over selective harvesting and built 65,000 […]
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
Idaho injunction lifted
A federal judge recently dissolved an injunction that threatened to halt many activities on six Idaho national forests in order to protect endangered salmon. The injunction had prompted angry protests in the forest-dependent community of Salmon, Idaho, earlier this year (HCN, 2/20/95). But U.S. District Judge David Ezra said a biological opinion released March 1 […]
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
Jail for a poacher
A Utah construction worker who killed a large, photogenic elk along a major road through Yellowstone National Park in the fall of 1993 and pleaded guilty to the crime will serve four months in prison and pay $30,000 in fines. But the rank act of poaching the elk was not what led Chad S. Beus, […]
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
Bleak future for cutthroat
Fishery experts agreed at a February conference that there’s no practical way to eliminate the illegally planted lake trout that are killing native cutthroat trout in Yellowstone Lake. “There isn’t a fix, there isn’t a silver bullet – even suppression is a forever commitment,” federal biologist Lynn Kaeding told the Billings Gazette. A draft report […]
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
Forest Service scrambles to obey law it long ignored
It’s a case of a bureaucratic train wreck creating a congressional train wreck. After refusing for decades to apply the National Environmental Policy Act, the U.S. Forest Service is now applying the law so fiercely that it’s put a host of other programs on the back burner. The Forest Service is delaying timber sales, archaeological […]
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
Wolf lovers give Idaho sheriff a piece of their mind
SALMON, Idaho – Linda Borton of Tucson, Ariz., was furious when she heard that one of the Canadian wolves released in central Idaho had been shot, and that Lemhi County Sheriff Brett Barsalou said he didn’t “give a damn who shot it.” That same night she fired off a letter to Barsalou. “I’m very much […]
Posted inMay 1, 1995: Land grants under the microscope
Non-native bird ruffles feathers
Conservationists clipped the wings of a controversial plan to introduce a non-native game bird into southwestern Colorado. Although the state Division of Wildlife hoped to release 40 ruffed grouse in the San Juan-Rio Grande National Forest in April, four environmental groups and two individuals sued the Forest Service to stop the transplant. The day after […]
Posted inApril 17, 1995: The New West's servant economy
Forest Service lops off timber task force
Agents of the Forest Service’s elite Timber Theft Task Force received two form letters at an April 6 meeting with Forest Service law enforcement director Manuel Martinez. The first letter thanked them for their service; the second said their unit was immediately dissolved. “It defies understanding that you’d take the most successful agents in the […]
Posted inApril 17, 1995: The New West's servant economy
Forest Service bombed in Nevada
A bomb blew out windows and ripped a hole in the wall of a Toiyabe Forest Service office in Carson City, Nev., in the early evening of March 30. No one was injured in the explosion, which scattered debris and damaged computer equipment in the office of District Ranger Guy Pence in downtown Carson City. […]
Posted inApril 17, 1995: The New West's servant economy
Big groups drop appeal
Big groups drop appeal Eleven environmental groups, including the Wilderness Society and National Audubon Society, have decided not to appeal a recent federal court decision upholding President Clinton’s Pacific Northwest forest plan, known as Option Nine. While the groups agree the plan fails to protect and restore the heavily logged ecosystem, they say they’ll focus […]
Posted inApril 17, 1995: The New West's servant economy
A modest proposal
Utah county commissioners passed wilderness recommendations on to Gov. Mike Leavitt March 31, and, as expected, they didn’t ask for much. The counties recommended about 1 million acres of Bureau of Land Management wilderness – about half what the BLM itself recommended and one-sixth of that urged by the Utah Wilderness Coalition. The counties left […]
Posted inApril 17, 1995: The New West's servant economy
Wild again
After several days of milling around their newly opened pens, all 14 Yellowstone Park wolves are wild once more. Most of the wolves remain in packs, but two young wolves are traveling solo, according to park spokeswoman Marsha Karle. The wolves have killed a buffalo and possibly an elk inside the park, which Karle says […]
Posted inApril 17, 1995: The New West's servant economy
Endangered act on tour
Endangered act on tour Members of the House Committee on (Natural) Resources, chaired by Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, will be in Vancouver, Wash., April 24 to discuss the reauthorization of the Endangered Species Act. Panels organized by Republicans will feature working people who have had their livelihoods affected by the law, says staffer Steve Hansen, […]
Posted inApril 17, 1995: The New West's servant economy
Blueprint for salmon survival
Blueprint for SALMON survival The new recovery plan to bring back endangered Columbia and Snake river salmon hits all “four H’s’ – hydropower dams, habitat degradation, hatcheries and harvest by fishing – but critics charge it’s still too soft on dams. The 500-page federal plan, required by the Endangered Species Act and announced by the […]
Posted inApril 17, 1995: The New West's servant economy
Land grant says wilderness hurts
Land grant says Wilderness hurts A new study by Utah State University, a land-grant institution, concludes that federally designated wilderness could harm rural economies. The study, which features a picture of a paved road running through southern Utah on its cover, drew immediate praise from anti-wilderness groups. “This study validates what the counties in Utah […]
Posted inApril 17, 1995: The New West's servant economy
Salvage logging squeaks by Senate
By a razor-thin margin, the Senate agreed March 30 to suspend environmental laws in order to expedite salvage logging in national forests. An attempt by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., to replace the amendment of her fellow Washington senator, Slade Gorton, R, with a milder one failed 46-48. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., cast the lone Democratic […]
Posted inApril 17, 1995: The New West's servant economy
How Western senators voted on the Murray amendment
Note: this is a sidebar to the news article “Salvage logging squeaks by Senate“ FOR suspending environmental laws to expedite salvage logging (against Murray): Republicans Bennett (Utah) Hatch (Utah) Brown (Colo.) Campbell (Colo.) Craig (Idaho) Burns (Mont.) Thomas (Wyo) Kyl (Ariz.) Simpson (Wyo) Gorton (Wash.) Hatfield (Ore.) Packwood (Ore.) Domenici (N.M.) McCain (Ariz.), and Kempthorne […]